Oven drying Victoria plums

Harvesting and preserving your fruit & veg

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Primrose
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Freezer pretty full and will be making some jam but has anybody ever tried oven drying Victoria plums?
Any hints? Do you dry them plain or are they better sprinkled with a spice like cinnamon? Does the taste and flsvour become more concentrated as happens with tomatoes when they are oven dried? And do they end up looking and tasting like prunes, even thiugh they a much lighter colour?
PLUMPUDDING
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Victorias have a lot of juice so higher water content and take forever to dry.
I've tried drying Opal which are a bit less juicy so quicker. They end up a bit like dried apricots in texture. Sorry I'm not much help, I think I'm a bit too impatient when oven drying things. I've been giving plums away, made jam, put lots of stewed ones in the freezer, been eating them fresh and stewed, have burnt a batch of low sugar Eastern European jam recipe by not stirring it frequently enough (2 hours over a low heat) and chucked the rest on the compost heap' Yes a very good year for plums :D

Next challenge is what to do with the Early Worcester apples that are already starting to fall off the tree. If an apple a day keeps the doctor away does four apples a day improve things even more?

A mini glut of peaches on my dwarf tree is very welcome though. Ive fed it this year and it has nearly 70 peaches with a few ripening daily. Lovely.
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Primrose
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Plum Pudding. - maybe you should give your surplus crop of apples away to the NHS now they have such a shortage of doctors ! :lol:
A nice dilemma to have - what to do with 70 peaches. These gluts always come together in autumn and can be a bit overwhelming. You may have to resort to old fashioned bottling. You can't put them on the compost heap!
Last edited by Primrose on Mon Aug 31, 2015 2:21 pm, edited 1 time in total.
PLUMPUDDING
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What a good idea Primrose just think how much healthier everyone would be if they prescribed apples instead of all the antibiotics, and put everyone on an apple diet instead of sweets, fast food and biscuits. I bet that would cut obesity and diabetes. I'll have to try it!
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Our friends in spain have a fruit farm last year the day before he was due to start harvesting the last of his peaches we had a very rare hail storm it only lasted 5 miniutes but damaged over a thousand peaches so badly he could not market them , he could not leave them on the trees as when they start rotting the juice out of them runs down the branches and damages the trees , he had to harvest them all then dump them in a corner of his field, about a week later he phoned me one evening and said to come and see a hoard of wild boar feeding on the peaches that where fermenting and all the boar ,around 30 ,where staggering all drunk, they are not an animal to aproach unless you have a gun under your arm
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Primrose
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Robo. - what an incredible story. That must have been a sight to be seen....but only at a very safe distance! But what a disaster for your friends with the fruit farm who lost their entire crop . You don't really think about juice from rotting fruit damaging the trees but on that scale it must be very acidic and have quite a severe impact.

Peach stuffed Roast wild boar must be quite tasty though :lol:
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Ive yet to try boar but ive been told it is strong flavoured, i get all the peaches i can eat as well as grapes,cherries, and loads of other fruits, i will have to get a gun as we very often hear them grunting as they run down our field when its dark
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The guy behind us in Spain has a very large fruit and olive farm but he is either lazy or rich , he is a nice English guy by the name of alan, earlier in the year the local cooperative refused to buy his peaches as they where to small he should have reduced them earlier in the year as the norm is 2 per branch he did not bother some had over 6 peaches per branch , today I've just been up the track that is on the edge of his fields there is about 6 rows of purple plums stretching around 200 yards all you can see is thousands of plums rotting on the floor and loads still on the trees ,higher up the track he has his late plums the yellow ones these are a decent size but he is waiting for his son to fly in on Monday to help him harvest them the trouble is a lot of them are turning ripe which is not good news when you take them to the cooperative in the village what a waste
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Primrose
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Robo - that seems such a terrible waste I agree. i guess the sight of so much fruit can be a bit overwhelming though if you have to scrabble amongst trees to pick it and labour is in short. supply. Plums are not very forgiving in terms of timescale. They get over ripe too quickly. I bet the wasps will be having a field day!
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Promise it really gets at me we had a plum tree in our garden at home we planted it from a young tree we bought at a garden centre we nurtured it for around 20 years we had a total of 1 plum and I love plums ,where we live in England there is one around the corner from our house ,every year the owner is in the street brushing up plums just to bin them , I guess I'm just a failed frustrated ex plum grower
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